Abrasive articles, such as coated abrasive articles and bonded abrasive articles, are used in various industries to machine work pieces, such as by lapping, grinding, or polishing. Machining utilizing abrasive articles spans a wide industrial scope from general finishing and material removal industrial applications, to optics industries and automotive paint repair industries to metal fabrication industries. In each of these examples, manufacturing facilities use abrasives to remove bulk material or affect surface characteristics of products.
Surface characteristics include gloss, texture, and uniformity. In particular, surface characteristics, such as roughness and gloss, may influence performance of optical media. Increasingly, optical media are used for data storage, particularly for digital entertainment including games, pictures, movies, and music. Surface scratches or poor surface quality may introduce errors when the optical media is accessed and in many cases, may make the optical media unreadable or unplayable. Particularly in situations in which the optical media is frequently reused or resold, surface repair is desired.
Surface characteristics also may influence quality in automotive paint repair. For example, when painting a surface, paint is typically sprayed on the surface and cured. The resulting painted surface has a pock marked orange peel texture or includes encapsulated dust defects. Typically, the painted surface is first sanded with a coarse grain abrasive and subsequently, sanded with fine grain engineered abrasives and buffed with wool or foam pads.
In addition to the surface characteristics, industries such as the optical media rental and resell industry or the automotive painting industry are sensitive to cost. Factors influencing the operational cost include the speed at which a surface can be prepared and the cost of the materials used to prepare that surface. Typically, the industry seeks cost effective materials having high material removal rates.
However, abrasives that exhibit high removal rates often exhibit poor performance in achieving desirable surface characteristics. Conversely, abrasives that produce desirable surface characteristics often have low material removal rates. For this reason, preparation of a surface is often a multi-step process using various grades of abrasive sheets. Typically, surface flaws introduced by one step are repaired using finer grain abrasives in a subsequent step. As such, abrasives that introduce fine scratches and surface flaws result in increased efforts in subsequent steps.
Typically, any increase in effort in any one step results in increased costs. For example, increased efforts include increased time utilized to improve the surface quality and an increased number of abrasive products used during that step. Both an increased time and an increased number of abrasive products used in a step lead to increased costs, resulting in disadvantages in the marketplace.
In CD, DVD, and game resell stores and rental providers, single-step surface repair of the optical media prior to subsequent rental or sale is preferred. Thus, both high removal rates and quality surface characteristics are desired from use of a single abrasive product. Poor quality surface characteristics may reduce the success of surface repair and thus, lead to loss of revenue from a CD or DVD and expense associated with the repurchase of the CD or DVD. On the other hand, low removal rates leads to low throughput and inefficiencies.
As such, a cost effective engineered abrasive article that provides improved surface characteristics when used would be desirable.